


An Interesting Four Years

by The_Big_Wee_Hag



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 09:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Big_Wee_Hag/pseuds/The_Big_Wee_Hag
Summary: Prompt: Something about Neal's time as Alanna's squire.Neal thinks about the most recent time he saw Alanna work.





	An Interesting Four Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [devilinthedetails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/gifts).



> for FiefGoldenlake's Wishing Tree 2018

This was going to be an interesting four years. Since a combination of the prohibition from king Jonathan and Alanna’s own principles had kept her away from Corus for pretty much the entirety of Kel’s (and therefore Neal’s own) Page training, Neal had grown accustomed to a very different type of woman. Sharp where kel was calm, tiny where kel was massive, Alanna was at least as fierce, but in a very different way. Kel’s ferocity burned inside her like a forge — it was there, it was not going to be moved, and it was hot, but it did not flare up easily. When it did, that was a sight to behold. Sir Alanna was different. Equally principled, equally fierce, she was much quicker to show her anger. He had only been traveling with her for a month, and she had already impressed and scared him in equal measure. 

only three days past, they had come upon a small town. This town had been hit with a summer sickness, and Alanna had thought it a perfect opportunity to test Neal’s ability to diagnose and prescribe in a non-emergency situation. Alerted of the sickness by a woman walking with a string of ponies in the other direction along the road, they had entered the town in the morning, and had approached a man sitting on a bench outside the inn. 

After a short conversation, Alanna was incensed. The last fall, royal surveyors had informed the townspeople that their well should be moved, as digging deeper would cause them to reach water with unsafe contaminants in it. Instead of moving it - They could not spare the laborers from the harvest before the ground froze, they had hired a traveling mage to put a filtration spell on it and, with his assurances that it should keep their water pure for at least 5 years, thought they would be safe. It was only six months later, with the mage long gone, when people began to feel unwell. 

Alanna and Neal inspected the well, and he realized (with only a little prompting) that the mage had put an illusion on the water to make it taste and look clean, instead of actually casting the more difficult—and expensive— stasis water purification spell he had claimed to cast. Following quickly in succession were: Instruction on the casting –– the PROPER casting — of a long-term self sustaining water purification spell, instruction in purging poisonous metals from the bowels, practice in thoroughly washing bed linens, and assisting with a very complicated tracking spell, using the remnants of the illusion spell that they had carefully removed from the well. 

Now, as they rode at a steady pace, following the feather that Alanna had tied on a short string to her dagger, Neal was preparing himself to watch the Lioness give this shoddy mage the biggest dressing down he had ever seen, from the way sh was fuming and muttering to herself over her horse’s neck. 

This was going to be and interesting four years indeed.


End file.
